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2 July, 2007 - Getting rural voters to cast their vote in the 2008 general elections may be one of the major challenges for a new democratic Bhutan suggests a study on people’s participation in local elections.
The study conducted by a lecturer of Sherubtse College, Mr. Sanjeev Mehta, stated that people’s participation in the democratic processes was low. “They have no political interest and are simply ignorant about the democratic processes,” he said.
Mr. Mehta said that the research found that none of the men and women who did not participate in the elections were prevented from voting but yet majority chose not to.
The study revealed that only 23.4 percent of the total 355 people interviewed in 52 villages under 19 gewogs in Mongar, Chukha and Samtse, had voted in all the village elections.
About 44.8 percent of the respondents said that they had never voted so far while the rest 31.8 percent said that they voted occasionally.
While villages under Samtse dzongkhag recorded the highest incidence of non-voting at 57.4 percent and Mongar the least at 34.7 percent, Chukha dzongkhag recorded the largest incidence of voting always with 32.7 percent.
The study also showed a significant gender difference in voting. About 59.4 percent of the total 133 female respondents said that they never voted as compared with 36 percent of the total 222 male respondents.
Low voting pattern in the GYT elections, Mr. Mehta said, suggested that people did not value GYTs. This eventually led to lower rate of participation in other activities like attending public meetings and associating with the GYTs and DYTs.
The study basically tried to find out the participation score among villagers in terms of gender, wealth, education and age in activities like voting, attending public meetings and contacting DYTs and GYTs.
By gender, the average participation score among women in the various activities was 41.47 percent and 52.79 percent for men.
Mr. Mehta said that wealth was a major factor contributing to people’s level of participation in voting, attending public meetings, and contacting DYTs and GYTs. “Richer segment of a society tend to participate more actively than the poor,” he said.
Taking the size of land holdings as a proxy variable of wealth since land is a major asset in the villages, the study revealed that 60.5 percent of the landless people had low participation in contrast to 14.28 percent of the people who owned more than four hectares of land.
The reason, Mr. Mehta said, was not exclusively limited to lack of opportunity among the poor but also the ability to use the opportunity. “Poorer people have higher opportunity cost of participation in terms of loss of time and income,” he said.
The study’s findings also showed that the participation level increased among people who had completed primary education but declined as people passed the sixth standard.
“This is interesting because it goes against the conventional wisdom that participation level increases with education,” Mr. Mehta told Kuensel.
He explained that the trend was so because many people who acquired higher level of education were mainly government servants posted to places away from their census registration.
Going by age, people between 18 and 30 years showed low participation rate in voting, attending village meetings and meeting the DYTs and the GYTs.
To improve people’s participation in the local government activities and to value GYT as an instrument of change, Mr. Mehta said that people needed to be informed more vigorously about the benefits of voting and the democratic governance.
Women’s participation in the local government activities, the study stated, was as important to enhance voter turnout in the villages.
During public meetings in the villages, the study suggested that people should be given opportunities to share their views and debate on issues concerning the village.
“This process would make people understand how a real democratic process works making them believe in the system,” Mr. Mehta said. “It would in turn induce greater participation.”
Officials from the Election Commission said that since they had not seen the research papers, they would not be able to comment on the findings.
The research was conducted between December 2006 and April 2007.